If you want to be with it, go little and local.

Local produce. Local economy. Local artists. Think global, act local, be hipstery in the happiest ways.

Lucky you: Tabby’s Place has a bumper crop of artisinal organic heirloom cats.

Even if it weren’t de rigeur, local would be a good idea. We dream widely and wildly, but we can only put one foot in front of the other on the dust of the earth. Our hopes can be huge, but our lives are tied to the soil, our souls to our bodies, “out there” to “right here.” We’re made of stars, yes, but also dust and years.

And sometimes we long for more than our little, local eyes can see.

The cats you are about to behold all have something in common with you.
You — the one there on the sofa in the Adventure Time T-shirt, eating Frosted Mini-Wheats for the third meal of the day.

These cats have all waited, little and local and longing.

You’ve waited, too.

Waited for the morning.
Waited for the evening.
Waited for tomato season.
Waited for a new season of Pretty Little Liars.
Waited for that phone call.
Waited for someone you could only dream existed, breathed, saw the same moon as you.

Waited for healing.
Waited for the page to turn.
Waited…
…waited with no guarantee that what you waited for was coming.
But still, you waited.

An act of faith.
Hope.
Maybe desperation.
Some days, definitely desperation.

Still, you waited.

And so did the cats.

As Langston Hughes heartbreakingly asked, what happens to a dream deferred?
It can make the heart sick.
It can shrivel like Larry King in the sun.
It can explode.
Or it can make you dig in your heels or paws and wait with determination for something that can — must — will — be so very, very worth the wait.
Every frickin’ minute of it.

I won’t be so schlocky as to suggest that the cats wear their waiting as heavily as we do. In his seven years at Tabby’s Place, Cory did not sit up at night singing “Maybe” from Annie, clutching a locket and aching to belong. As other kittens were plucked like prettier flowers, Picasso and Georgia did not twang out “When Will I Be Loved?”

And therein lies the lesson for us.

Cats wait well. Living entirely in the moment, they do not give one tenth of a damn whether they’re adopted this afternoon or in 2074. They do not worry that they’ll be the last one picked — or, worse, the one utterly unpicked.

They live. They trust. They focus on the first thing — being all that they are, just as they are, to the praise of their Creator. Somehow, right on time, all those other things are added.

And when the wait ends, their open hearts are already ready.

So wait where you are, longing locally, dreaming cosmically.

You wait in good company.

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